My husband is a veggie so most of my meals are veggie friendly or the occasional meat dish I can scale down to one portion. I have recently started baking again.

My favorite family cooking traditions

My mum is an awful cook (sorry mum!) who specialises in slow cooker or prefrozen dishes. Whereas my dad makes a mean chilli. I have pretty much taught myself to cook.

My cooking triumphs

This would have to be Boxing Day a few years ago, I cooked roast beef for the first time for 8 people and it was great, if I do say so myself.

My cooking tragedies

I have this terrible tendancy to invite friends over for dinner and drinking too much wine during the meal and not serving dessert. I have learnt to make chilled dessert in advance. Or the time I first made cheese potoatoes at high school and didn't drain the potoates before mashing them.

Mmmm made this with regular sausages as we don't have any smoked and added the apple at the end to try and save the texture of it as suggested by another reviewer. The sausage, once sliced, fried and added to the 'kettle' (pan with lid), tated devine. But sadly the apple didn't hold it shape as planned but then I don't think was a bad thing at all as it gave a sweetness to counteract the sour lemon throughout the dish. I also used cider vinegar as that what we had. Let's just say that when our veg box gave us another red cabbage this week, I've gone out and bought some sausage to make this again. Yum!

For the taste to effort ratio this recipe comes up trumps. I didn't use the lemon juice and didn't measure the ingredients just kinda did it by eye so I used less oil and salt than was needed. I also sprinkled the parmesan over before baking. Yum and so easy. Thank you

My ham hock was a raw smoked one which needed soaking overnight with regular changes of cold water. I then simmered it in fresh water for 1.5 hours to cook it. After this I used thisrecipe as a base as I didn't fancy a hock and beans/lentils dish but used potatoes, carrots and parsnips as that was what I had. I know that this review is not accurate for the base recipe but as the author hints at it's a great flexible starting point.